As the real murderer behind the scenes, the mayor hid very deeply and was very cautious.
The townspeople trust and rely on him, so there is no way they would suspect him. Even if someone wants to investigate this matter, they will only find the exorcist.
Who would have thought that the kind-hearted mayor, who was always respectful to the exorcist and flattered him all the time, was the culprit?
If Yue Ya hadn't been careful and recorded what happened last night, and found evidence of the mayor's actions, he wouldn't have been caught so quickly.
Sensing that the other puppet had returned, Yue Ya's consciousness was pulled out of the video pendant and he opened his eyes.
The puppet that was originally guarding Old Man Chen's house was now standing in front of Yue Ya, covered in dust and dirt. There was an equally dusty old man stuck in his armpits. The old man's hair and clothes had signs of being burnt, and he had fainted.
This is... Old Man Chen? ?
Yue Ya was shocked, but soon understood what was going on: "The real murderer set fire to the Chen family. He couldn't break the Chen family's protective magic circle, so he had to take the risk of setting a big fire to burn the bodies inside."
As for Old Man Chen's life, the real murderer certainly doesn't care.
Yueya asked the puppet if he had seen the arsonist. The puppet shook his head. Yueya asked the puppet again if he had seen the mayor. The puppet nodded, indicating that the mayor wandered around the front door of Chen's house for a while and then left.
After a while, the Chen family's backyard caught fire. When the puppet went to rescue people, he did not see the arsonist.
Soon, Old Man Chen's neighbors were disturbed by the fire and hurriedly began to put out the fire. The puppet thought with his not-so-smart brain and decided to bring Old Man Chen to Yue Ya, and then flew back with Old Man Chen in his arms.
"Well done," Yue Ya praised, and then analyzed: "Given the mayor's cautious character, he would have left the scene immediately after setting the fire and found an alibi for himself. I guess he would leave a human talisman at the scene to wait for the result. Did you see it?"
The puppet tilted its head and fell into deep thought. After a while, it suddenly realized something and raised one of its feet to show Yue Ya the sole of its foot.
There is a red humanoid symbol stepping on it!!
Yue Ya: “!!!” Why did I feel that the puppets had become smarter before? It must have been an illusion!!
There was already a crack on the humanoid symbol, perhaps caused by the puppet stepping on it. The humanoid symbol let out a sinister laugh, tremblingly left the puppet's feet, slowly floated up, and then...
Yue Ya stepped on it and crushed it into pieces.
"The mayor has learned from the humanoid talisman that I know the truth. You take Old Man Chen with you and follow me." The more urgent the situation, the calmer Yue Ya became. He looked at the other puppet and said, "Take me to find the exorcist."
The puppet brought Yue Ya to the exorcist's secret room and pushed open the secret door. Yue Ya did not see the exorcist, but saw a paper man sleeping soundly on the bed.
The paper figure was a little smaller than Yue Ya, with two round blushes on its pale face and a tall hat on its head with the words "The Biggest Villain" written in a crooked manner.
It turns out the exorcist is a paper ghost.
Thinking of the exorcist's bold words when he drank fake wine, Yue Ya shook his head. A rookie like you who can only drink fake wine wants to be the biggest villain. You won't survive the second episode in a TV series. At most, you will be a cannon fodder villain.
Yue Ya grabbed the exorcist's collar and was about to lift him up, but he didn't expect the exorcist's paper clothes to be very slippery. When he grabbed them, they slipped to his shoulders, revealing the red rope around his neck.
Yue Ya narrowed her eyes, hooked the red string, and saw a jade key! !
The scroll is sealed with a jade lock, what a coincidence!
Yue Ya made too much noise, and the exorcist woke up. He looked at Yue Ya with hazy eyes and asked with a big tongue: "What is Li...Li doing?"
"You're not awake yet." Yue Ya punched the exorcist and artificially helped him "fall asleep."
Yueya took out the jade key and opened the scroll.
I originally thought that there would be a key fragment hidden in the scroll, but I didn't expect it to be an ordinary rare prop.
[Congratulations to player "Yueya" for obtaining the rare item "Tracing Scroll". ]
[Instructions: 1. You can use the scroll to go to another location by specifying a location or character. 2. The capacity is limited to five people. 3. The two locations are in the same plane and the distance between them is no more than 1,000 kilometers.]
Before Yue Ya put away the scroll, the windows outside the secret room started to bang. A cold wind blew into the secret room along the ground, and the temperature dropped sharply. All this reminded Yue Ya that an uninvited guest had arrived.
I don't understand you guys. You have to create an atmosphere for yourself when you show up. If you just appear quietly, can't you catch your target by surprise?
Yue Ya touched the scroll and imagined the appearance of the Lion-Awakening Demon in her mind. The Lion-Awakening Demon and its location appeared on the canvas simultaneously.
"Bang——" the secret door of the secret room broke open, and a fierce evil spirit rushed in.
"I didn't expect that at your young age, you could have figured out my identity..." A sinister and hoarse voice echoed in the room. A dark and twisted shadow broke into the dark room and walked towards Yue Ya step by step.
Yue Ya said nothing. He put the puppet into the card space, held Old Man Chen in one hand and the exorcist in the other, and went into the scroll without looking back.
The scroll closed and disappeared.
The mayor grabbed nothing with his dry hands and raised them awkwardly in the air: "Where is the person? I haven't finished talking yet!"
…
In front of the tattered gate of the Lion Dance Temple, a scroll appeared out of nowhere, and Yue Ya fell out with his family.
"This tracking scroll is very useful, but it does waste my coccyx..." Yue Ya rubbed his coccyx and used a hunting net to catch the exorcist to prevent him from escaping after waking up.
Before Yue Ya could stand up, he felt the ground shaking. He looked up and saw the awakening lion running out from somewhere and rushing towards him madly. Its pair of blood-red eyes were very scary in the dark night.
Yueya's heart was pounding: "Wait, I'm here to help you!" I'm not here to deliver takeaway to you!
The lion dance seemed not to have heard his words and did not slow down at all. Fatty stood in front of Yue Ya, and his small body exuded a terrifying evil aura.
The lion felt threatened and stopped suddenly. It crawled on the ground, staring at Yue Ya motionlessly, with a look of aggrieved expression in its eyes.
Yue Ya breathed a sigh of relief and asked, "You want to eat me?"
The lion dance shakes its head like a rattle.
The last time we met, the lion dance suddenly rushed over. If it didn't want to eat Yue Ya, could it be...
"You wanted to save me last time? You knew the exorcist and the mayor were secretly harming people, so you were afraid they would kill me?"
The lion dance nodded frantically, its tail swinging back and forth.
Yueya probably understood. He sorted out the whole incident in his mind and said to Xingshi, "So you didn't kill the other two people either. You were trying to save them."
The lion nods.jpg.
"Then why do you bite their heads off? Do you want to eat the bodies?"
The lion shakes its head crazilyjpg.
"Can you tell me why?"
The lion dance couldn't speak. It shook its head anxiously, its furry decorations swaying back and forth, and a whimpering sound of grievance came from its throat.
Yue Ya touched its forehead soothingly: "Don't worry, I'm not blaming you."
The lion took a breath and licked Yueya with its tongue.
Yueya's face was covered with saliva, and he almost exploded: "Don't lick me."
The lion blinked its eyes and suddenly thought of how to answer Yueya's question. It lay on the ground with its body tilted, exposing its belly.
An ordinary lion dance only has a lion head and a cloak. The performance requires cooperation of two lion dancers wearing lion dance costumes. One holds up the lion head, and the other holds up the lion's body. The legs of the two are the lion's legs. When they dance together, they can make the lion dance come alive.
However, the structure of this waking lion is different. It has a complete skeleton, and its chest cavity and limbs are made of white bones. When you pull aside the black velvet, you can see a translucent membrane growing on its abdominal cavity, which contains more than a dozen sleeping souls.
Yue Ya put his hand on the belly of the dancing lion and instantly felt the resonance of more than a dozen souls.
The lion's belly was clearly visible, with no digestive system or skull. Yue Ya guessed, "You didn't bite off their heads, but just licked away their souls?"
The lion nodded.
"There are only three victims this time, but there are more than a dozen souls here. Who are they?"
"It's the lion dance team." An old voice answered.
Yue Ya turned around and saw Old Man Chen with tears in his eyes. He didn't know when he woke up.
Yue Ya first released a few puppets, letting their own aura go to different places, interfering with the mayor's judgment and preventing him from coming over so quickly.
"Old man, do you know the inside story?" Yue Ya remembered that the townspeople said that Old Man Chen was an old member of the lion dance troupe.
Old man Chen couldn't stop crying. He recalled: "Five years ago, a headless corpse appeared in front of the Lion Dance Temple. The lion dance team's exorcism was ineffective and lost the trust of the townspeople. The number of victims continued to increase. The mayor asked a master to perform a ritual, but there was still no improvement. Later, someone witnessed the lion dance eating a human head, and the rumor that the lion dance had become a demon spread.
"When the townspeople's panic reached its peak, an exorcist appeared and said that only by burning down the Lion Dance Temple could everyone's lives be saved. With nowhere else to turn, everyone burned down the Lion Dance Temple overnight. The members of the Lion Dance Team did not believe that the Lion Dance had turned into a demon, so they came to put out the fire, but the result was..."
Old Man Chen burst into tears when he said this: "They all...all died in that fire...I was the only one who survived. Because I had a high fever and was unconscious that day, I didn't go to the fire scene. After I recovered from the illness, the ancestral jade pendant on my neck cracked. I guess it was it that saved me from the disaster."
Yueya sighed: "What happened next?"
"What happened later? What happened later... The Awakening Lion Temple burned down, and Awakening Lion Town returned to peace. The exorcist was worshipped as a god by the townspeople and became the new patron saint of this place. Awakening Lion Town was also renamed Exorcist Town."
Yue Ya: "What's wrong with the awakening lion? Isn't it a guardian deity? Why is it so weak?"
"The power of the lion dance comes from people's faith. The patron saint who loses faith will disappear," said old man Chen, gently stroking the belly of the lion dance team. "The heroic souls of these lion dance teams are the last faith. They are the ones who have retained the true patron saint."
Yueya seemed to be thinking about something: "So I just need to help the lion regain the trust of the people, and I can complete the mission."
"Where is this? Am I not drinking at home?" The exorcist twisted around in the hunting net, pushing his flattened hat. He stared around with his lifeless fake eyes and found Yue Ya: "Can anyone explain to me what is going on now?"
Yue Ya said calmly, "The current situation is that your image as a big boss has collapsed, and you have been arrested by me."
The exorcist raised his paper hand, fully awake: "It's over!"
Old man Chen hadn’t noticed the exorcist just now, and now he was frightened: “What the hell is this!”
The exorcist snorted coldly: "You are the thing."
"Well, he is not a thing," Yue Ya explained, "This is an exorcist. His original form is a paper ghost."
"You are nothing!" The exorcist threatened Yue Ya: "You'd better let me go, otherwise you will be dead when my boss comes."
"Your character is completely ruined," Yue Ya walked up to him and curled her lips, "It seems that you don't know what situation you are in yet. I said, you are under my arrest now."
"You think you can trap me with this broken net!" The exorcist took out his skull staff and released black fire.
Blackfire pounced on the hunting net and was completely swallowed up. What a joke! This net has seen everything in the world. It is naive to think that a mere little bit of blackfire can burn it.
The exorcist's face was blackened by the smoke and he was very depressed.
Yue Ya summoned Feng Feng and the puppets to surround the exorcist. He smiled at the exorcist and said, "Now I'll give you a chance to report and expose your boss. If you confess, I'll give you leniency. If you resist, I'll give you severity."
Feng Feng curved her lips, exuding a ferocious aura.
The pressure from his own kind was so direct that the exorcist huddled into a ball, trembling.
Another bystander who was also trembling with fear was Old Man Chen. His heart was pounding and for a moment he couldn't tell which side was the real evil force.
This kid who can control evil spirits and puppets is quite awesome.
"Just to remind you, Fengfeng can suck your soul dry with his hands, so you'd better answer truthfully and don't play tricks on me."
Fengfeng showed her palm: "Touch it, and your soul will melt."
Exorcist: “!” Don’t say such horrible words in such a gentle tone, you bastard!
Fengfeng smiled and held out her hand to the exorcist.
"I confess! Isn't it okay for me to confess?" The exorcist shrank into a ball: "Don't come over here!"
Feng Feng took back his hand and said innocently, "Master, he is obedient."
"Very good," Yue Ya took out the video pendant and started recording: "Criminal suspect, Exorcist, take the initiative to explain your crime process."
The exorcist covered his face and said, "I regret it now. I regret it very much."
"Don't cover your face."
The exorcist let go of his hand and cried, "I'm just a weak paper spirit. You can see that I can't even burn this broken net. This skull cane was given to me by the boss. It's my most powerful weapon."
"Who's your boss?"
"My boss is also a paper spirit. He needs to eat fresh human brains to replenish his energy. At the same time, he longs to live the life of an ordinary person, preferably an ordinary person who is respected by others." The exorcist showed a look of disgust: "As a villain, I think his needs are a little bit perverted."
Yueya nodded in agreement: "Go on."
"One day, the boss and I passed by Awakening Lion Town and heard the story of the guardian god of Awakening Lion. He thought of a way to have the best of both worlds. He wanted to destroy people's belief in Awakening Lion and then take over himself. In this way, the whole town would be his granary, and when he needed to eat, he could put the blame on the Awakening Lion Demon."
Yueya: "Tell me about his plan in detail."
Exorcist: "The boss dug a fresh corpse from a mass grave, used a paper beast to bite off the dead man's head, pretending that the head was bitten off by a lion dance, and then used paper talismans to throw it in front of the lion dance temple. The corpse was not murdered, so the lion dance certainly couldn't find the murderer or the evil spirit. Later, the boss continued to throw corpses and artificially created a witness who saw the lion dance eating people. In fact, he just made the old man have a temporary hallucination."
Therefore, "the old man saw the lion dance eat people with his own eyes" was also a scam carefully arranged by the real murderer. In fact, this plan was not perfect, but the townspeople were dominated by fear. Even if the real murderer used the rotting corpses in the mass grave to deceive people, they did not find the flaws.
When Old Man Chen heard this, he was furious and pointed at the exorcist and cursed: "You are the real devil! You killed so many people in this town, and you killed my son!"
Old man Chen was too emotional, so Yue Ya calmed him down before continuing to interrogate the exorcist.
"Did your boss tell you why he asked you to play the exorcist?"
Exorcist: "He said he just wanted to be an ordinary person, so he decided to possess the mayor. He also said he wanted me to feel the feeling of being admired by everyone... But I just want to be a villain that everyone fears!"
"Why don't you resist?"
"...I can't beat him," the exorcist slowly lay down: "He promised to give me a glass of fresh blood wine every day, but I didn't expect him to put a curse in the wine and imprison me in the town. I can't run away, so I just lie down and do whatever he tells me to do."
Yue Ya nodded: "He just wants you to be his scapegoat, and push you out when something goes wrong."
Exorcist: “?”
"He has cursed you, do you think he can't do such a thing?"
"You're right, he can do it." The exorcist sat up straight and said seriously, "I told you all about his conspiracy, but he no longer trusts me. When he comes to find me, the first thing he will do is probably to kill me. Does your statement of leniency for confession count?"
Yue Ya guessed what he was thinking and said bluntly: "Cooperating with me is your only way to survive. Tell me what you know."
"In fact, in the past few years, the people who suddenly disappeared or died in the town were all eaten by the boss. He always acted secretly and only killed one person each time. The reason why he killed three at once this time was because he had been possessed by a living person for too long and consumed too much energy, so he had to eat a lot. According to the original plan, he would blame the Awakening Lion Demon for this situation."
"He's exhausted so much that he's a little weak now," Yue Ya looked at the exorcist, "Do you know how to force his soul out?"
The exorcist said: "When the consumption is serious, his head will be particularly fragile..."
"So we have to attack his head and force his soul out?" Yue Ya thought for a moment and said, "This would be risky for Mayor Zhen."
"Uh..." The exorcist said, "I haven't finished yet. He hates water. You just need to pour a basin of water on his head to scare the soul out of him."
"So simple?"
"It's that simple," the exorcist said. "It's easy to force it out, but it's not that easy to kill him. He just hates water, but ordinary water can't hurt him."
Yue Ya only said: "You don't need me to do anything. I have already thought of an ending for him."
The exorcist couldn't help but shrink his neck when he saw the faint smile on his face.
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